Pressure on ‘Brokeback’ Clegg will not let up

Nick Clegg did not have a good week. First, there was the 'illegal' Iraq war gaffe, then a horrible YouGov poll showing a slump in the Lib Dems' popularity. To cap it, the Financial Times reported that David Davis had described the Clegg-Cameron alliance as a 'Brokeback Coalition', in a snarky reference to the 2005 gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain.

But the issues are not as clear-cut as they look. While the 'illegal war' remark during PMQs was interpreted by the majority of the media - the Mole included - as a faux-pas, in retrospect it could be seen to be anything but.

Why? Because the comment helped draw a clear line in the sand between the Lib Dems and their Conservative coalition partners. And if he and this coalition are to survive, Clegg needs to do that regularly. His only hope of keeping his party faithful on side is to keep reminding them that Lib Dems and Tories are different.

It's for precisely that reason that he's going on the road this summer, addressing the party's grassroots, trying to persuade them that he and Vince Cable and the other Lib Dems in the Cabinet are having an influence on government policy, softening the Tory blows on welfare, civil liberties and tax.

He has a fight on his hands, and he knows it. The new YouGov tracker poll had the party on 13 per cent - way down from the heady 30 per cent ratings they were scoring during the election campaign.

Of all the senior Lib Dems, Clegg is in the most awkward position. This is not just because he was most responsible for driving through the coalition deal. It's because he is the one who, as deputy PM, is under the most public pressure to keep up the love affair with the Tories, and - crucially - he's the one most liable to be cut adrift if it turns sour.

Which brings me to Labour and its relations with Clegg.

The three leading Labour contenders - David Miliband (still the favourite), brother Ed Miliband and Ed Balls - all are hungry to return Labour to power and avoid a period in the wilderness.

And, as an old Labour party hand put it to the Mole yesterday, if the wheels do come off the coalition, and Cameron is forced to go to the country before this government's time is up, and if the Tories are again unsuccessful in achieving a working majority, the new Labour leader will need to seek a deal with the Lib Dems in order to re-take Downing Street.

And the most likely way to get the Lib Dems on side - remember, the party members and MPs have to approve any pact - is to persuade them that the short affair with the Tories was all Nick's fault, he should never have flirted with Cameron, and it's time to move on.

Clegg - we have had confirmed by Peter Mandelson - made it a condition of a pact with Labour that Brown stood down. The irony is that any new Lib-Lab pact would probably be dependent on Clegg going, and someone like Vince Cable taking over.

Which would explain why Cable was so keen to let the Sunday Times know how difficult he is finding life in the coalition government. He told Isabel Oakeshott in yesterday's interview that he was encountering "emotional difficulties" working with the Conservatives - a party he had spent 40 years thinking of as his enemy.

"I don't think any of us pretend it is not," he went on. "Orientating myself into co-operation has required effort and concentration."

Expect more of the same from Cable and any other Lib Dem who is unconvinced the Lib-Con marriage can last forever.

The same YouGov poll that gave the Lib Dems only 13 per cent had the Tories up to 44 per cent. But Cameron and his advisers are not stupid enough to believe that, in the midst of massive welfare cuts and job losses, they can win a second election without Lib Dem support.

In the short term, therefore, Cameron will do his best to ensure the coalition does last, forgiving Clegg his 'faux-pas', smiling benignly on Vince's chitchats with the press and doubtless using David Davis's tasteless intervention as a very good excuse not to invite him back onto the front bench anytime soon. ·